Building communities and awareness at the NGS Gillian Sinclair NGS Liaison Officer

1. Building communities and awareness at the NGSGillian SinclairNGS Liaison Officer

2. What is the NGS? Current outreach mechanisms Communities User survey Conclusions Outline

3. What is the NGS? Growing! 25 member institutes 33 heterogeneous resources 15,000 processing cores Available to any researcher at a UK HEI or research institution More new member sites coming soon!

4. is bringing researchers together We have now supported in excess of 1000 researchers Our users come from all research areas and funding sources

5. Current outreach mechanisms Roadshows* Campus champions* Innovation forum* Website* Training Conferences Literature, posters etc Mailing lists, blog, Facebook

6. Roadshows Standard event – 3 hours including lunch Tailored to the institutions requirements in terms of length and content Can incorporate training Presentations by real live NGS users on research topics relevant to the institution Presentations from the training team on how to get started and how to run jobs Roaming RA service can be made available Lunch!

7. Roadshow attendance Over 120 people have attended

8. Roadshow outcomes 87% attendees think the event length is just right 90% presentations right length and high quality 93% of attendees are either likely to apply for a NGS account or are considering 98% will tell their colleagues about the NGS

9. Campus Champions All current NGS member sites have been asked for a nominee. Signed off by a VC etc to ensure that the position is recognised higher up Campus Champion will be a member of staff who has responsibility for research computing outreach become an expert contact for local users and potential users of NGS and related campus resources. act as a conduit for communications between the NGS and member institution. To address Lack of engagement with local service provision/management Lack of connection to user communities that are not at NGS member sites Lack of knowledge of full range of services available Under utilization of partner and affiliate resources through the NGS interfaces

10. Benefits Improved engagement between the institution and NGS Training and documentation on the processes for user registration and management. Specific Champions section into NGS surgery meetings. Material for publicizing NGS and related local activities, including research success stories etc. Organisation of a launch event / Roadshow to kick off the program locally.

11. Innovation Forum Second annual event held Oct 2009 Magic Circle Headquarters, London 131 attendees Mix of researchers, PhD students, academics, IT staff, research support staff

12. Innovation Forum Used to gather feedback on range of topics including website, NGS future, cloud computing and what communities want from us. Break out sessions based on most common research areas and main NGS services data handling, user support, site integration, software Bioinformatics, molecular modelling, social sciences Break out sessions chaired by a mix of NGS staff, users and other e-science reps Breakout groups reported back and outcomes are being looked at

13. Website Launched 18th of November Feedback gathering at the IF’09 The first port of call for many people, has to be good Has specific sections to direct people to what they need to know e.g. how to get started, applications More interactive and dynamic Poll on the home page shows that 75% of visitors like the new website

14. Website Since the 18th of November 2136 unique visitors viewing an average of 4 pages a visit Top 3 countries – UK, US and Spain Most popular pages (apart from the home page) Certificate overview GSI-SSHTerm application Your account

15. Communities Launched last week Designed to help NGS users find other NGS users in similar research areas etc. The aim is to foster interaction between NGS users, enable collaboration and to encourage a sense of community between Users of the NGS services. Community members can search the NGS user database using key words such as software names, research topics etc.  All user application cases are searchable.  It is also possible to browse lists of users by research areas http://www.ngs.ac.uk/Communities

16. User survey Carried out once a year Entered into a draw to win one of 3 Amazon vouchers Advertised on widely http://tiny.cc/NGSsurvey Aims to find out how people use our services, what benefits it has for them and how much they know about what we offer.

17. Frequency of NGS usage

18. Why use the NGS?

19. NGS service usage

20. NGS outreach awareness

21. To sum up Range of methods to foster community – online and offline methods Exploitation of methods to maximise publicity and communication with existing and potential users Variety of ways to gather feedback and for users to feedback to us directly Our users are pleased with the service we are offering

22. Gillian Sinclair Gillian.sinclair@manchester.ac.uk Website – www.ngs.ac.uk Fortnightly news bulletin – www.jiscmail.ac.uk/NGS-news Blog – http://www.nationalgridservice.blogspot.com/